20080829

Israeli nationalist leaders appear in Dallas this weekend to garner support to thwart Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's planned cession of Judea & Samaria and the eviction of tens of thousands of Jews to create a hostile, Muslim state of Palestine- ruled from Jerusalem. This weekend's "Days of Elijah" conference at Dallas' Hyatt Place Hotel (817) 626-6000 is open to the public starting Friday at 6pm (ET, 5pm CT) and viewable online.

The Zionist leaders advocate preserving Israel's safety and integrity through solutions other than Secy Condi Rice is implementing- with Prime Ministers Olmert and Abbas dividing Israel to create a hostile Palestinian state with a capital in a divided Jerusalem.

US Congressmen Rep. Louie Golmert and (formers) Rep. Dave Weldon and Mike Sodres will also appear, along with many pro-Israel, Christian leaders, organized by Batallion of Deborah's Jodie and Rev. Keith Anderson, Covenant Alliances, and Christian friends of Assaf ha Rofeh Hospital.

The conference is available for videostreaming live this weekend (beginning at 3pm Pacific time) through Monday evening. A $35 subscription provides access to the videos for on-demand viewing throughout September via this link.

Jihadist-reformer, Egyptian Dr. Tawfik Hamid, reveals how Islamism conspires to conquer the West through a campaign of economic destabilization and socio-political revolution. Dr. Hamid believes the Saudis are institutionally fundamentalizing Islam to increase their socio-religious hegemony throughout the world.The Israel-Palestine conflict, he reveals, is Islamism's red-herring - effective in confusing the West about the true nature of the global Islamist imperialist movement.

Dr. Hamid illuminates the relationship between Saudi oil affluence and Islamist anti-Zionism. The Saudi's rationalized their oil-affluence upon their fundamentalism, he explains, in their promoting themselves and their fundamentalism throughout the Muslim world - which has been widely accepted.

20080819

Moscow’s blitzkrieg in Georgia is more than a military campaign. It is designed to empower Russia’s diplomatic strategy, which seeks to make the European Union (EU) the West’s chief representative in future negotiations with Russia. Quite naturally the Kremlin wants to escape the logic of U.S. and NATO policy, which is to contain Russia within her national borders. Meanwhile, the European Union is an entirely different animal: toothless, utopian and ready to please. In Russia's Concept for Dominating Europe, J.R. Nyquist writes:

The real purpose of this operation, the Russian president hinted, was to highlight the dangerous obsolescence of NATO and Europe’s unrealistic expectations with regard to Russia. The old treaties will not keep the peace, he said, because they are unfair. Russia is a great power and deserves greater influence.

Today the European Union confronts Russia in the same way Neville Chamberlain confronted Hitler in 1938; being outwitted and tricked in the ceasefire negotiations, there is no possible outcome other than appeasement. The Russians insist that their troops be accepted as peacekeepers in Georgia. The French mediators allow this. And so, the stipulated withdrawal of combatants therefore does not apply to the Russian troops. Under this ceasefire agreement Moscow can claim – in a strictly legal sense – that Russian troops can stay in Georgia indefinitely. President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin are laughing at the French while observing international law. Meanwhile, occupied Georgia is looted and burned; Georgian ships are sunk and the Georgian capital is strangled.

NATO has done nothing, even though NATO has promised to make Georgia a member of the alliance. NATO defers to the European Union. Bush also defers and sends his Secretary of State to Paris instead of Moscow. While all of Europe demanded a negotiated solution, only Poland and the Baltic States (along with Sweden and Denmark) denounced Russian military aggression. All of Europe should have denounced Russia with one voice. All of Europe should have eschewed “negotiations.” All of Europe should have demanded an immediate withdrawal of Russian forces from Georgia. All of Europe should have begun to mobilize troops and combat aircraft for the defense of Georgia. In that event, Russia would have retreated.

But the Kremlin knew, in advance, this wouldn’t happen. There is no “military confrontation” in Georgia. As President Medvedev said, “I am convinced that with the end of the Cold war … bloc discipline simply disappeared.”

Think-tank, Stratfor elaborates: The post-Cold War world, the New World Order, ended with authority on Aug. 8, 2008, when Russia and Georgia went to war. Certainly, this war was not in itself of major significance, and a very good case can be made that the New World Order actually started coming apart on Sept. 11, 2001. But it was on Aug. 8 that a nation-state, Russia, attacked another nation-state, Georgia, out of fear of the intentions of a third nation-state, the United States. This causes us to begin thinking about the Real World Order.

The Russians have now proven two things. First, contrary to the reality of the 1990s, they can execute a competent military operation. Second, contrary to regional perception, the United States cannot intervene. The Russian message was directed against Ukraine most of all, but the Baltics, Central Asia and Belarus are all listening. The Russians will not act precipitously. They expect all of these countries to adjust their foreign policies away from the United States and toward Russia. They are looking to see if the lesson is absorbed. At first, there will be mighty speeches and resistance. But the reality on the ground is the reality on the ground.

Will Americans now consider a Presidential candidate able to win in the hardball game that the big boys play?

Islamic fundamentalist militantism is widely misconstrued as being socio-economic in cause, and therefore solvable socio-economically. This theory is undermined by evidence of the alleged Mata-Hari of al-Qaeda, Aafia Siddique, the MIT-undergraduate, Brandeis University Ph.D neuro-scientist. Did economic underprivilege radicalize her to pursue organized terrorist sedition through a network of American Muslim sleeper-cells? Does she intended to reduce discrimination against Muslim-Americans by unleashing an outbreak of bio-terror genocide in New York City? Is the intent of her radicalization to fight for more- or less freedom for Muslims and Americans?

Prof. Barry Rubin (director of Global Research in International Affairs Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs Journal and Turkish Studies) writes "Crusades long-gone, but Jihad lingers on," publishes in The Jerusalem Post. Prof. Rubin clarifies a primary distinction between Middle-Eastern and Western societies - Islamic society is being denied a Reformation to modernity. Many societal leaders of Muslims (both in governments or in social / community organizations throughout the West and the rest of the world) advocate Islamism to demonize the West (similarly to Communism, Nazism, and Fascism) in order to limit the appeal ofsubversive ideas.

The English, Dutch, American and French revolutions were not triumphs of traditionalism, as in Iran, but of greater democracy.

Many Westerners continued (as they do today) to be religious, but more open and tolerant.

This struggle between the old and new societies characterized much of the 19th and 20th centuries, yet the trend was steady. Perhaps fascism - and arguably communism - were the final reactionary movements, and World War II was the last struggle. Yet victory required 500 years of rethinking and education.

There's no such history in the Middle East, while several additional problems block movement toward moderation and democracy here. Whatever one thinks of specific Islamic doctrine as generally interpreted, the big problem is that it remains so powerful and hegemonic. Arab nationalism is anti-democratic, repressive and statist. Islamists seek a somewhat revised version of the eighth century, albeit with rockets and mass communication.

IT IS also worse because Middle East regimes and revolutionaries know Western history. They are aware of the fact that while pious Western philosophers and scientists sincerely believed open inquiry and democracy didn't threaten traditional religion and the status quo, they were wrong.

Openness led to revolution and to modernsecular-dominated society - a West with all the ills decried by those in religious, ideological and political power in the Middle East. They also know what happened to Soviet-bloc dictatorships that experimented with more freedom. And they know that accepting Western ideas makes people want to change their own societies.

On top of that knowledge, they have weapons, technology, new means of organization and communication to block any change that tries to make its way through persuasion or threat. This point applies as much to Iran's Islamist rulers as to Syria's pretend-pious ones or Saudi Arabia's Wahhabi monarchs.

FINALLY, it is worse because there's a powerful, growing movement - radical Islamism - posing an alternative to modernism. The question is not merely of tiny, marginalized al-Qaida but also the governments of Iran, Syria and Sudan; the Saudi regime; powerful mainstream societal influences, Hamas and Hizbullah; the Muslim Brotherhood, and many others...

20080808

In a video accusing China’s Communist Government of “mistreating Muslims” a Jihadi group threatened to attack the Summer Games in Beijin. A spokesman of the Turkistan Islamic Party accuses China of “forcing Muslims into atheism and destroying Islamic schools. The “Turkistan Islamic Party” is most likely based across the border in Pakistan, where sources affirm it received training from Al Qaeda.

Weeks ago the organization claimed responsibility for a bombings across the country. The latest video shows graphics of a burning Olympics logo and explosions. This week, attackers killed 16 police and wounded more than a dozen in the Xinjiang city of Kashgar using homemade bombs.

As China is discovering al Qaeda in its own backyard, this begs powerful questions:

1. If these Jihadists will escalate their Terror against Chinese cities and installations -and the recent discoveries indicate this trend- will Beijing find itself in the same trench as Washington that is against al Qaeda and the Salafists?

2. And if that becomes the case, will China continue to pursue a policy of support to other Jihadist forces, including the Islamist regime in Khartoum?

3. If Communism and Jihadism clash again in the 21st century inside the Asian superpower, will its resources rich Western province becomes a new Afghanistan with Jihadists converging from central Asia and other parts f the world?

For now Chinese officials are downplaying the danger altogether and dismissing the threat: "Those in Xinjiang pursuing separatism and sabotage are an extremely small number,” said a pro Government Uighur leader. “They may be Uighurs, but they can't represent Uighurs. They are the scum of the Uighurs," regional communist official Bekri said. But that is what Russian officials always said about Chechnya and their Indian counterparts argued about Kashmir. Jihadism has demonstrated that its adherents can swiftly recruit and expand, especially if international Wahabis are generous and committed. Hence the answer to this critical new “Jihad” will come from as far as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia but also from the smaller principality of Qatar, where al Jazeera can transform a local separatist movement into an uprising in the name of the Umma.

20080801

On Tuesday 29 July, the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) demonstrated in front of the Office of Congressman Brad Sherman, Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Terrorism and Nonproliferation. The demonstrators demanded the cancellation of a subcommittee hearing on whether American foreign aid is going to organizations affiliated with terrorists.

“This hearing will go on. We need to make sure that the State Department is not giving U.S. tax dollars to those on the other side in the war on terrorism,” said Sherman. “I know there are many in our community so desperate for peace that they want us to sweep under the rug the pro-terrorism positions of some groups. There are groups in the Islamic world truly dedicated to peace, but we should not blind ourselves to the fact that some are not.”

An additional organization was involved in the effort to try to derail the hearings. The organization is the Islamic Society on North America. This group was listed as an unindicted co-conspirator by the Justice Department in the case alleging efforts to raise money for Hamas. Further, a recently declassified FBI memo on NAIT, the parent organization of the Islamic Society of North America, states as follows: “Within the organizational structure of the NAIT are those… who have declared war on the US… with the common goal being to further the Holy War (Islamic jihad).”

Steve Emerson, Executive Director of the Investigative Project, outlined some of the more troubling aspects of participation with these groups: namely their ties to terrorist entities and promotion of radical Islamic ideology. A number of groups that the State Department has cooperated with have links to entities such as Al Qaeda, Hamas and Hizballah - which are designated as terrorist organizations by the United States government. The groups partnering with the State Department help to support an ideology that focuses on eliminating secular Western powers and promoting their stringent ideas of Sharia law, or law as governed by Islamic text.

In his testimony, Emerson argued that the State Department's actions in funding these programs only serves to legitimize fundamentalist voices who wish to promote a strict interpretation of Islam. This approach helps to increase support for terrorist groups and violence, which will help to aggrandize fundamentalist theology worldwide. The focus of the State Department's funding should promote genuinely moderate voices within the Muslim community, rather than reaching out to those who justify violence, support designated terrorist groups, and promote the funding and support of jihadist ideology globally.

While the outreach to the Muslim community by the State Department "is an honorable and worthwhile pursuit, the State Department has conducted outreach to the wrong groups, sending a terrible message to moderate Muslims who are thoroughly disenfranchised by the funding, hosting and embracing of radical groups that purport to be opposed to terrorism and extremism," Emerson wrote in his testimony further stressing the idea that the State Department's polices need to be reanalyzed in order to better select which Islamic organizations receive funding in order to promote peace and understanding.